


On Faith

by Eturni



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Crisis of Faith, Freeform, Introspection, Mentions of the Fall, No beta we fall like Crowley, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-21
Updated: 2020-12-21
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:48:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28183434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eturni/pseuds/Eturni
Summary: There are things that are true about angels and demons. They don't have free will. They essentially come from the same stock. As far as Crowley is concerned, they can't have real faith because they Know that He's there as a solid fact.The thing about spending so much time around humans is that it can change your outlook on things. Crowley considers the ways in which he has faith, and the people and things it might be best to have faithin.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 9
Collections: "O Lord Heal This Gift Exchange 2020" [OLHTS discord server]





	On Faith

**Author's Note:**

  * For [OAbsalom](https://archiveofourown.org/users/OAbsalom/gifts).



> For my dearest OAbsalom, who absolutely could not go through this year without getting _something_ as a gift, whether you were on the list or not. It's been a real one and you've helped me through it.
> 
> I do not know if you will enjoy this. What I do know is that it will either get the discussion "Yes, but we need to talk about this thing" or "Absolutely not and here's why you're Wrong". I look forward to either when you have 2 seconds to breathe again.

Faith was a curious thing, really.

Across their acquaintance Crowley had maintained, much to Aziraphale's annoyance, that angels could not have faith. Faith was in the not knowing, after all, and all angels Knew. No faith required.

That was what was quite so odd about the two of them specifically.

Aziraphale did have an odd kind of faith, in his own way. Crowley had known him for long enough to catch every waver in the angel’s facade as he carefully parroted the party line; as much to avoid reprimand as it was because he thought he should. Still, he bent the rules like bamboo in a tornado. Not to mention that he thought way too much about what things should be than any angel had a right to with Mother all there and shit.

Demons had a distinct lack of faith too, obviously. Yes, that was partly because they’d all seen and known Her at some point, too. Mostly it was because when someone who styled Themself as a Mother threw you into a pit of endless suffering for bringing up some very valid questions about project management and acceptable losses, thank you very much, you stopped really putting any expectations on Them. What demons had was mainly presumptions and guesswork, and all of it put into just being contrary to whatever the angels were up to.

What demons technically had was nothing, a void. The only certainty they had was in their (perfectly well-earned) hatred of the divine. That and the information driven directly into their consciousnesses without warning when there were orders going out.

What Crowley had was an imagination.

Crowley had questions. Asked questions. All the time, in fact.

Thing was, he always knew he wouldn't get an answer. He didn't need one, really. He just needed to ask, to not be passive in whatever was going on. To do more than work against the superficial shit they could see Heaven doing. After all, it felt suspiciously like the same sort of work half the time.

He ignored, as best he could, that part of him still wanted an answer. It was the point of the thing, after all, wasn’t it? Wouldn’t ask the question if you didn’t want the answer.

He knew that most likely that he wasn’t even heard any more. He knew there wouldn’t be answers. Apart from the small part of him that still wondered, because there had to be an answer, even if it was one They’d never let the rest of them know.

He found that he thought about the argument with Aziraphale in 1020-something more often than he really cared to. Worse situations just gave more opportunities to do truly good things… It always sat more like more setting people up to fail. That way, inevitably, led to him wondering if he’d been set up to fail, too. 

Problem was, of course, that if there was a reason, then it was all a set up from the start. It was all as unfair for them as it was the poor bloody humans. You couldn’t be a demon and have free will. Couldn’t be an angel and have free will. If Crowley was made to ask the questions that brought about his fall then maybe a third of the host had been created with the explicit purpose of being thrown away.

Part of him wondered if he could just understand it, if he could just know why, would it all make sense?

Part of him feared that he had been summarily pushed out of heaven because it didn’t. Not really. Because maybe there wasn’t actually a point to any of the hurt and They had preferred to break half of their number entirely and leave them in the dark than to run the risk of shaking the trust of the whole host.

So maybe Crowley wondered if there was a reason behind all of the strings being pulled. Maybe it was why he let himself be led by human ingenuity in how he approached his job. They came up with the worst things for themselves anyway and echoing their imaginative evils was like a taste of free will for himself.

The point was that he didn’t know. He only had his own imagined potential answers and what he thought most likely in any given century or time of day. He had faith. It was a terrible burden for a demon.

Could it really be a surprise, then, that when he got the job of overseeing the Antichrist he suddenly didn’t want to play ball with Heaven and Hell’s grand plans any more?

As it turned out he actually enjoyed it, as much as a demon with the constant screaming anxiety of Hell looking over his shoulder could. The thrill of even slightly exercising free will thrummed under his skin for exactly eleven years.

He stretched the edges of how much control he could take of his own actions for almost a dozen stomach twisting years and revelled in every moment of not-knowing as he worked against the sure, solid answers of Hell.

Right up until the day of Armageddon.

Everything started to fall away at a terrifying pace. The cracks in the pavement quickly becoming potholes. Chunks of earth falling away when Hell caught up to him. The gaps between almost frightening to jump when he found Aziraphale gone from the shop. Getting the Bentley through the M25 orbital felt like trick jumping a chasm, only with significantly more fire than Evel Knieval went through. 

He was running on fumes by the end, sure, but also on more faith than he’d ever thought to have and with nowhere to place it all. It wasn’t faith that They had something better going on any more, not really. It was maybe faith in himself: the hope that if his imagination could bullshit something he could find a way through the other side.

Right until Beelzebub turned up and he slightly floundered under the very real Knowing of what they would do to him for fucking it all up quite so badly. Right until the second that Adam thought too deeply and reached for the dark current of power in himself.

But then Aziraphale was standing and his rambling despair stilled with a surprising ease. Aziraphale, suddenly asking a question that threw them all for a loop with all the confidence of a mediocre white man at an acting audition.

For what may be the first time in millennia Crowley found himself in the hands of his faith. Faith that his angel was a petty, genius bastard of course, but also faith that all of this really might mean something.

That the game, ineffable as it was, wasn't only pissing around with people's lives like mah jong tiles on a chess board, but had actual meaning.

For the first time Aziraphale seemed absolutely sure of himself. Not an inch of faith needed if the not knowing was the point of it all along. They were never meant to know. Not one of the host was more informed or secure; they all just never asked if what they knew was the right part of the knowing.

Crowley grinned and postured and kept Aziraphale’s back safe as the angel worked his way through his new theory. For the few moments it took to throw all of Heaven and Hell’s premises on their heads Crowley couldn’t resist looking to the other in smitten joy, watching him rules lawyer himself around actual Armageddon.

It was hard to say if the thing that had twisted up into his thoughts was pure Knowing of the kind he was supposed to have but for someone who had proven it over millennia, or whether he was just suddenly finding that he had better places to put his faith.

On the outside it was all a bit anticlimactic. The kid just kinda decided he didn’t want to, and the forces of Heaven and Hell slipped off to lick at their wounds. All while Crowley was wrestling with the odd new feeling that he could believe in things that weren’t Them and still think of it as faith.

Then Lucifer himself started to claw his way up out of Hell and it was decidedly more climactic than Crowley had ever wanted.

But there was Aziraphale asking him to stay and fight their corner. Aziraphale being a right bastard and talking about the ‘spark of goodness’ in him. There was Aziraphale, one hand raising a flaming sword like it might do anything worthwhile, and reaching out to him with the other.

Crowley took it.

There was the terror of hope in the odd faith that stayed even as he and Aziraphale said their goodbyes. He had a tyre iron against Satan himself for Someone’s sake. He was trying to put hope out of his mind completely as the earth trembled with the effort of holding back the hellfire rising below, but if he was going to be eradicated he supposed that it was the only place that was truly fitting. It was where he had staked his claim; with an angel who was just as bad and as excellent at his job as Crowley was at his, and with the humans that never ceased to amaze him.

Adam moved.

The world changed around them, as sudden, matter of fact and without fuss as someone who had seen mormons a few yards down and decided to turn off for home a few streets early.

The rest of them cleared off until it was just Crowley and Aziraphale on the tarmac, passing off a bottle of wine like teenagers with white lightning and contemplating how much this was all planned.

Aziraphale was so happily vague about it. “Could have. One could ask Her, I suppose.”

Like it wasn’t the questions that had gotten Crowley booted summarily down a few floors in the first place.

He pulled a face. Muttered something about the way He always just smiled like They knew something She wasn’t telling you.

For Aziraphale, now much more certain of himself, that was the whole point.

For Crowley it was still sore, somewhere deep down that he tried not to dwell on too often. There was relief in it too, though. No one Knew near as much as they thought about Their plans. Crowley had something else he was much happier to put a degree of trust in. He found himself wanting to see how far his faith might take him with the madness ahead.


End file.
